Even though it seems like implementing an aircraft carrier to kill a fly, what a amazing bunch of work. I wonder if you could implement this in hardware and wind up with a working computer.
Its like saying our universe is a simulation embedded in another universe. The simulation only need to be to the resolution of Plancks quantum of action. We couldnt distinguish any detail finer than that. The other universe could have a much finer resolution than our hbar. The simulator could be using a hundred grid points and time steps for grid point and time step in our universe.
Well, having some sort of a central clock to use for the Game of Life ticks is a prerequisite, right?*
And then the ticks are an all-powerful global clock that you get for free. A-la Leibniz's two clocks metaphor.
* Unless you're trying to go for a distributed multi-verse implementation with separate boards having their own clocks and only limited message passing between them. The more I think of it, the cooler it seems. I'm now imagining setting up Erlang/OTP on these :)
"Our computer is also asynchronous, meaning that there is no global clock controlling the computer. Rather, the data is accompanied by a clock signal as it flows around the computer, which means we only need to focus on local but not global timings of the computer."
